Rise Of The Female Entrepreneur: Abby Ahrens

Rise Of The Female Entrepreneur: Abby Ahrens

The Spelling of Mentor is The Same, Whether in English or French. Sharing Your Corner of Success

Interview by Jessica Gize

When I was a little girl, the age where your feet swing as you sit in chairs, I remember visiting New York with my father and eating breakfast at a restaurant inside our hotel. I noticed a particular lady in the corner so comfortable in her environment enjoying her breakfast as her sweet, mild pup sat beside her. I kept looking over, and I am sure for the 10th time, my father asked me to please stop staring. As the waiter poured me some more orange juice, he commented that her name was Maxine, and she lived on the top floor of the hotel and was down every morning for breakfast with her best friend, a miniature little poodle comfortably sitting next to her. “Oh, dad,” I recall saying, “can we go talk to her.”

Decades later, I got to talk to someone very similar. I met a lady who lives on the top floor of a hotel and has lovely dogs that enchant her with their personalities. This lady is Abby Ahrens, owner of Enchantè Hotel in Los Altos, California.

Abby Ahrens seems comfortable with the entrepreneur life between owning antique stores, being a real estate agent for over 53 years, and now a hotel owner. “My mother was a designer, so perhaps she put me at ease with the idea,” Abby stated. “But women didn’t have careers back then; people saw it more as if they had hobbies,” she continued. It makes Abby think about her childhood and what was a passion or hobby. “Homes.” She emphatically said. “Rooms, the décor, the layout,” she continued. Abby recalled her days in Chicago, where she would ask her mother over and over if they could visit the Thorne Rooms one more time at the Art Institute of Chicago. These miniature rooms reflect European and American interiors from the late 13th century to the 1930s.

Moving forward in life, Abby found herself in the world of real estate, so it gave her a little taste of her passion. “Each and every home I sold, I found endearing,” she said. Her discovery along the way in real estate was the struggle women had with divorce and children. Many times, she found the financial world the struggle for women. “I watched women retain the family residence in a divorce but unable to maintain it financially while taking care of the children,” Abby informed me, “and it would simply break my heart,” she said. Seeing these struggles instilled in Abby a desire to focus on the mentorship of other women in her life as she walked the world of entrepreneurship. “The time is now to help each other, to offer to Mentor to each other. All women at all stages in their business have something to offer, and beyond that, they have something that is in need by others,” Abby continued.

“There always seemed to be two kinds of women, ones with their hands open in encouragement and the others closed and afraid of losing their jobs,” Abby expressed. She has hopes that more and more will open their hands, knowing that helping another woman is moving all of us forward. “I succeeded in my corner,” Enchantè Hotel takes over triangleshaped land, “and with this success, I owe it to others to mentor, to help,” Abby said with a genuine smile.

As we continued our conversation while she was exiting the elevator, I could hear her speak sweetly in a low tone soft voice to others. She said she had some loves of her life greeting her at her door. You see, Abby’s love of France goes beyond décor but to the names of her dogs: Antoine and Jolie, who greeted her at her door as she arrived up to her room.

As our conversation came to a close and I said goodbye to Abby on the phone, I closed my eyes for just a moment. I suddenly was that little girl in the restaurant with my father, and the lady at the other table, Maxine, was sitting with us with her arms wide open.

www.enchantehotel.com